Best Web Hosting Affiliate – Learned From 100 Sign Ups in 1 Weekend
This post is going to look at over 100 affiliate web hosting sales I generated to multiple hosting companies and answer the question of who has the best web hosting affiliate program.
The Black Friday and Cyber Monday web hosting promotion I ran gave me a unique opportunity to review multiple hosting affiliate programs at one time.
On Black Friday and cyber Monday this little blog was ranking #2 in Google for “Cyber Monday web hosting deals” and generated over 100 web hosting affiliate sales. The rub is I am only being given credit for 2/3 of them!
This post is going to try and answer who is the best web hosting affiliate considering…
- Payout Amount
- % of sales to commissions
- Conversion Rate
- Affiliate Support – Response Time
- Affiliate Support – Resolution
What It Won’t Address – Host Quality
Because of my done for you private blog network services growth I have been adding many different quality shared hosting accounts. The Black Friday and cyber Monday posts were showcasing the best deals that I picked up on those days. I have not had time to review each host in detail yet(hopefully a useful post on that in the near future).
So… Who are the best and worst web hosting affiliate programs?
As I often do I geek out a bit with data and after a couple pivot tables, data mining and a weighted average decision matrix here is the best to worst web hosting affiliate programs…
The Best Web Host Affiliate Program
iPage– It has everything I look for in a hosting affiliate good conversions, high payout, high % of sales resulting in commissions and a responsive/helpful affiliate manager. Plus I can say the hosting is reasonable for an inexpensive shared hosting provider. I am still missing some sales from iPage but based on some recent communication I am hopeful to be credited for a portion of those sales.
FatCow–With a high payout and a near perfect sign up to payout ratio this web hosting affiliate is definitely a solid choice if you have used their hosting before. Responsiveness was quick when tested and was able to credit me for a missed payment.
The Worst Web Host Affiliate Program
WebHostingPad – 0 commissions after 20 sales generated by me!?!? Come on this is frustrating! After several emails and phone calls I have not received ANY communication back. Hopefully I can edit this post and say my account has been credited for the sales I generated!
HostGator (Direct is worse – through Commission Junction is ok) – This won’t be a popular choice but after 8 sales direct on Friday to HostGator and not receiving credit for any I switched links to CJ HostGator links and I received credit for those. Working with the HostGator affiliate support I received no credit for any of the sales and very little help in terms of supporting me to get credit for the sales I generated.
How Did I Rank Them? Weighted Average Decision Matrix
- Payout (30% weighting)
- % of sales to commissions (20% Weighting)
- Conversion Rate
- Affiliate Support – Responsiveness
- Affiliate Support – Problem Resolution/Helpfulness
[/wpsharely]
- Green Dot = Recommended
- Yellow Dot = Not Recommended
- Black Dot = Don’t Use
Payout (30% Weighting)
Obviously if we are promoting a hosting account the higher the payout the better. Shared hosting payouts are in the $10-$100 range with most non discounted sign ups in the $100 range.
WebHostingBuzz had high scores across the board but with such a small payout it really hurt them in their overall score.
% of sales to commissions (20% weighting)
This one is very important! I was shocked that with over 100 confirmed affiliate sign ups (confirmation emails sent to me) I only received about 2/3 the commissions! 1/3 of all sign ups I generated I received no credit!
So when recommending which hosting provider to be an affiliate for I have to consider the % of sign ups that convert into commissions to be paid to me.
FatCow, BlueHost, WebHostingBuzz and iPage were the best with WebHostingPad being by far the worst!
Conversion Rate (20% weighting)
Sending traffic that doesn’t convert well is almost as bad as making a sale and not getting paid for it. Tracking the number of clicks I sent I could easily see how the conversion rate for each host was for my given traffic.
Most were pretty steady at the 10-15% mark with a couple outliers in the 5% and the 30% mark. I can’t put a lot of faith in my click tracking numbers because I had to piece together the story from a couple different sources since I changed links on a few hosts throughout the weekend.
WebHostingBuzz, BlueHost and iPage had the highest conversions with myHosting and HostGator having the worst(of the ones with a meaningful number of clicks).
Affiliate Support Responsiveness (15% weighting)
When I saw the number of sales that I was not getting credit for (0%!!!) in some cases I attempted to contact affiliate support. Based on how quickly they got back to me I scored them from 1-5 with several getting back to me right away and others I have still heard nothing…even after phone calls (WebHostingPad).
Affiliate Support Help (15% weighting)
Contacting me back when I submit a help desk ticket or leave a voicemail is one thing but I care about how helpful they are. If I was contacted back and did not receive any help collecting the missing payouts then I did not give them a high score out of 5. If they said they would help and it hasn’t cleared yet I gave them a mid-scoring. HostGator had a reasonably fast response time but was not very helpful.
Direct Affiliate Arrangement with Hosting Company or Via CPA Network?
When signing up for a hosting account we have 2 options…
- Sign up direct with the hosting company
- Sign up via an affiliate network like the one I use commission junction
Based on the results my preferred option is always to sign up via a central clearing house. The reason for this is that there is one location to monitor, confidence in receiving payouts and no concern over a minimum payout.
So the bottom line for this article is the 2 best hosting affiliate programs are iPage and FatCow promoted using links from CJ.com.
Anyone have a similar experience or other techniques for going about making sure you get paid for the affiliate sales you generate?
Nice to see a compilation of the list. It was quite surprising to me that the % of sales to payment isn’t good. I knew this was kind of expected since I’ve read Hostgator doesn’t really payout what you sell, but I would’ve thought that it wasn’t as widespread in most of them.
I’d really be interested to see your report on the webhosting services themselves. And see if the poor customer service response carries over to those (for those that had low response scores in this category).
Hi Winston, I expect something like 90% sale to payout because of cookie clearing etc but not 65%! For the most part the companies were good but getting 0 commissions after 20 sales were generated it is really frustrating!
It will be interesting to see if the unhelpful “help desk” culture of some will spill over into other areas of their organization.
Hey Jon –
Great breakdown…sorry to hear about the weak payout percentage. Was glad to not only get great deals on hosting and take advantage of your awesome offer, but also to make you a couple bucks as a thank you for the great stuff you post.
Hope it works out OK in the end.
Hey Curt, thanks..yes it has all worked out I am happy with the overall promotion even if I don’t get credit for more sales. But , hopefully I will still be able to scratch up more money from the sales I generated.
Great post and very helpful as always 🙂 How good does Ixwebhosting pay you? Would love to hear if their affiliate programm is reliable.
I don’t have the numbers in front of me but IX is near the top of the pack in terms of payout, conversion and being credited with Sales I generated…however their support is not very helpful!
Hey Jon
Thats a very informative review. Never would have thought they were as a pack so bad at paying out.
I do note bluehost looks solid though
regards
Your Black Friday/Cyber Monday offer was terrific to begin with. But sharing the results of your promotion and what we should keep in mind when building our own sites/offers makes it even more worthwhile. You don’t see this a lot, so thanks! I was really pleasantly surprised with this post-‘sale’ twist. 🙂
I have only bad experience with hostgator as well. I’m not in blogging/IM niche so don’t generate many commissions. Although twice I was bit excited that second sale in row (to get to the minimum payout) just hit my account (beer money 🙂 ). Logged in and found out that they immediately canceled the older commission so I’m again under the minimum payout.
Hey Jon,
That’s a really bummer they are not paying out. Well done on ranking #2 for that search…Amazing. Wow, 100 sign ups. You’re kickin’ butt! Keep it up!
Doug
Hi Jon,
Did you try Mediatemple.net?
Thanks a bunch Jon. I was just mulling over who I should promote. I was leaning one way but now that I see this I will take a different slant. A real eye opener. Thanks.
Great article.
What are your thoughts on content lockers?
Only 13 out of x? have shared the content so the very large majority of your readers wont read & get access to the full analysis that you have done. What are your thoughts on that? Is it worth it? What is the effect in general? (I am not having a go at you using it more interested in your thoughts around the usage of it and the trade off between the value/cost that it brings)
Well first of all nice blog post but can you just tell me how to know when is black friday or cyber monday and how can we know what all discounts they are offering is there any way to know all this
Have you ever tried Host1plus.com affiliate program?